E.J. Mitchell Shifted from Nashville

Editor Moves to Cherry Hill, N.J., in Musical Chairs

Everett J. Mitchell, who was named the first African American editor of the Nashville Tennessean less than two years ago, was transferred today to a smaller Gannett Co. paper, the Courier-Post in Camden/Cherry Hill, N.J., in a round of musical chairs involving Gannett editors. Mitchell is now executive editor of the New Jersey paper.

Derek Osenenko, executive editor at the Courier-Post, was named editor of Gannett News Service, based at Gannett headquarters at McLean, Va.

Osenenko “replaces Mark Silverman, who moves to The Tennessean in Nashville as editor and vice president/Content and Audience Development. Everett J. Mitchell, formerly vice president/News and editor at The Tennessean, was selected to replace Osenenko as executive editor in Cherry Hill,” a Gannett news release said. Silverman had been editor and publisher of the Detroit News before Gannett sold it last year.

“It’s been a rushed morning,” Joyce Gabriel, managing editor of the Courier-Post, told Journal-isms. “I’m happy,” she said of Mitchell’s appointment. “He has such good credentials. Everybody was impressed. He seems very nice.”

Mitchell was introduced to the staff and met with other managers, going out with the publisher to get a look at the circulation area, Circulation Director Jim Gregory said.

Silverman met with the Nashville staff at about 10:15 a.m., when the announcement was made, a reporter said. The Tennessean newsroom has about 190 people.

Mitchell returns to the Northeast to “lead a fine newspaper in a very competitive market,” Tennessean Publisher Ellen Leifeld said on the paper’s Web site. “Under his leadership in Nashville the newsroom has provoked closer scrutiny of public policy. He has an opportunity to do the same in New Jersey in a very competitive newspaper environment.”

“I’m very grateful that he brought back that investigative drive,” she later told Journal-isms. “The newspaper is happy about that and the community is happy about that.”

Leifeld was named president and publisher of the Tennessean a year ago, replacing Leslie Giallombardo, who resigned and announced plans to form her own business.

Mitchell, then 42, was managing editor of the Detroit News when he took over the Nashville job in December 2004 from Frank Sutherland. His previous experience as an executive editor had been at Gannett’s Statesman Journal in Salem, Ore., before he took the Detroit job.

Mitchell told the Tennessean staff when he was named that he would concentrate on public service journalism, watchdog journalism, First Amendment journalism and “news that makes a difference in people’s lives.”

Among the journalists of color who joined the staff under Mitchell were investigative reporter Melvin Claxton, Leavett Biles, assistant presentation editor, and Alan Whitt, assistant managing editor for sports.

Last year, the paper published an investigation of the Tennessee Highway Patrol that found that troopers were hired because of their political connections, and reported that some had criminal backgrounds. Another story, also by reporters Brad Schrade and Trent Siebert, exposed sexual harassment in state government.

Referring to the Tennessee Highway Patrol and Gov. Phil Bredesen, a December story by Schrade said, “A months-long investigation by The Tennessean has shown that two-thirds of THP officers proposed for promotions under Bredesen had made campaign donations or had relatives or patrons who did. Of those, half were recommended over troopers with better scores on impartial exams.

“Revelations about those promotions were one factor contributing to the forced departures this month of Pitts” — Lynn Pitts, ousted as the head of the patrol — “and his superiors, Safety Commissioner Fred Phillips and Deputy Commissioner Tom Moore. Bredesen said the department is permeated by cronyism.”

The Tennessean’s circulation is 172,879 daily and 233,134 Sunday, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The Courier-Post’s is 69,000 daily and 84,000 Sunday, Gregory said. Its newsroom has about 130 people, according to Gabriel. The Courier-Post competes with the Philadelphia media for South Jersey readers and has an African American publisher, Mark Frisby.

Mitchell did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

At a session at the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ 2005 convention on ASNE’s Diversity Leadership Institute, a retreat for newspaper editors, Silverman said, “We have spent years and years of hiring people of color and trying to make them white.”

As reported here at the time, he added: “And as soon as they act white they get promoted.” Otherwise, it’s “she’s too quiet and he’s too loud. Society values diversity on paper, as long as you act white.”

Silverman and other panelists said editors must break out of their comfort zones and respect cultural differences.

“I have known Silverman for years and have been impressed with his work for many years,” Leifeld told Journal-isms.

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Leonard Sykes Jr., Milwaukee Journalist, Dies at 53

“To say Leonard Sykes Jr. was well-connected in Milwaukee’s central city is a bit of an understatement,” Meg Jones reported today in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Leonard Sykes Jr.

“As urban affairs reporter for the Journal Sentinel, Sykes wrote about issues affecting Milwaukee as well as organizations and groups dedicated to making the community a better place.

“He was known for helping out co-workers with ideas and sources for stories and for knowing most of the community’s movers and shakers whose phone numbers filled his Rolodex. And he shined his journalistic spotlight on issues he knew were important.

“His last article, which ran in June in the Journal Sentinel the day before he had a massive stroke, focused on the growing momentum of a national effort to reconnect fathers with their children.

“Sykes, 53, died Sunday in Milwaukee. He had been on life support since he suffered a stroke on Father’s Day while visiting his father in Chicago.”

In his column on Sunday, Eugene Kane wrote, “Without Sykes around, I find myself appreciating his contributions more profoundly than ever. The precarious nature of his ailment brings a sobering realization about the fragile mortality we all face. Many readers can no doubt relate to the potential for catastrophic illness visited on friends or family. It leads to soul-searching that helps keep personal priorities squarely in place.

“The newspaper will miss Sykes for his institutional knowledge of a city that can’t easily be replaced because of his encyclopedia-like recall and his passion for writing about important issues all too often ignored by most journalists.”

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Hartford Courant Reporter Ends VOA Arrangement

“After questions were raised about his being paid by the government, The Courant’s Washington bureau chief will no longer appear as a panelist on the Voice of America,” William Weir reported Saturday in the Hartford Courant.

“As part of an arrangement approved by The Courant, Washington Bureau Chief David Lightman had appeared frequently on ‘Issues In the News,’ a weekly radio show on the U.S. government-sponsored Voice of America. For each appearance he received $100. According to the VOA’s website, his most recent appearance was Sept. 3,” the story continued.

“It can certainly be seen as a conflict, and that’s why we’re stopping it,” Clifford Teutsch, the Courant’s editor, said in the story.

Teutsch said Lightman’s editors had approved the payment arrangement several years ago. The stipend was considered fair, he said, because topics discussed on the show were often outside his reporting duties and required research and preparation on his own time.

Meanwhile, Jesus Diaz Jr., publisher of the Miami Herald and the Spanish-language El Nuevo Herald, told readers Sunday that, “The past week has been painful for many in the Cuban community and for employees at The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald. Many have questioned the motives behind the dismissal of two El Nuevo Herald reporters and a freelance writer who did a significant amount of work for us while simultaneously working for and being paid by Radio and TV Martí.

“I approved the dismissals because, as the publisher of these newspapers, I am deeply committed to the separation between government and a free press. Further, our employees violated our conflict-of-interest rules. . . .

“I am concerned about our readers’ reaction to columnists Carl Hiaasen’s and Ana Menendez’s opinion columns in today’s paper,” he continued. “My first reaction was to keep both columns, which represent Carl’s and Ana’s opinions, from running in the paper at this time because I believe they may inflame sentiments in the Cuban community.

“However, many in our organization have told me that doing so would be the equivalent of suffocating the very freedom of the press I was trying to protect when we dismissed the El Nuevo Herald reporters. Therefore, the articles are published in today’s paper.”

• Askia Muhammad, Washington Informer: Gold Coast Goes for the Gold

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Black, Latino Students Back 1st Amendment Less

“U.S. high school students know more about the First Amendment than they did two years ago, but they are increasingly polarized in how they feel about it, according to an update of a groundbreaking survey funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation,” the organization reported today.

It also said, “While the study finds that white students are more supportive of First Amendment freedoms than African-American or Hispanic students, income disparities between racial and ethnic groups also contribute to these differences.”

• “Hispanic students (52%) are less likely than white students and African-American students (60% each) to have access to classes that deal with the First Amendment. Hispanic students were also less likely to take classes that discuss the role of the media in society.
• “However, both African-American students (29%) and Hispanic students (25%) are more likely than white students (19%) to take classes that dealt primarily with journalism skills.
• “Racial minorities such as African-American students (43%) and Hispanic students (41%) are more likely than white students (31%) to think the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees.
• “White students were also more likely (87%) to think people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions; 77% of African-American students and 74% of Hispanic students felt that way.
• “Differences among racial subgroups were negligible on the controversial issue of whether flag burning should be a constitutional right â?? only about 15% of all race and ethnic groups feel that people should be able to burn the flag as a political statement.
• “While foreign-born students are more apt to participate in student media activities, they are at the same time less supportive of the First Amendment in general, and free press rights in particular. 43% of immigrant students think the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees, and less than half of the students (48%) who were never naturalized agreed that high school students should have the right to publish stories without interference.”

The study was released on Constitution Day. The U.S. Constitution was signed by 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention 219 years ago.

“U.S. high school students are far more likely to take classes that teach about the First Amendment than two years ago, according to the survey. And more students now support protections for the news media. They also are more in favor of their right to report in their own newspapers without school officialsâ?? approval,” a news release said.

“But more students today think the First Amendment, as a whole, goes too far in the rights it guarantees. A gap is widening between those who support this fundamental law and those who donâ??t. And teachers, while themselves increasing their appreciation of the First Amendment, donâ??t think schools are doing a great job of teaching it.”

“We see progress,” Eric Newton, Knightâ??s director of Journalism Initiatives, said in the release, “but there are still serious problems.”

• Tracey Wong Briggs, USA Today: When First Amendment hits ‘close to home,’ teens care

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Greensboro Paper Recounts City’s Gay “Purge”

“On Feb. 4, 1957, a Guilford County grand jury emerged from its closed session and issued a bundle of indictments of a scope unlike any before or since â?? against 32 men accused of being homosexual,” Lorraine Ahearn wrote Sunday in the Greensboro (N.C.) News & Record.

“After witnesses named the men during police interrogations, the suspects were tried one by one in a Greensboro courtroom for crimes against nature, almost exclusively with consenting adults.

“The now-obscure episode, which some longtime residents came to call ‘the purge,’ was the largest attempted roundup of homosexuals in Greensboro history and marked one of the most intense gay scares of the 1950s.

“Unlike sweeps of subsequent decades, involving raids on public parks and gay bars, Greensboro’s 1957 trials focused on private acts behind closed doors.

“The purpose, in the words of the police chief, was to ‘remove these individuals from society who would prey upon our youth,’ and to protect the town from what a presiding judge called ‘a menace.’

“Some 32 trials in the winter and spring of 1957 would end in guilty verdicts, 24 of them resulting in prison terms of five to 20 years, with some defendants assigned to highway chain gangs.

“Based on dozens of interviews over a four-week period with those who recall it, this is the story of what happened.”

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Native Women Hurt More by Domestic Violence

“Reporter Jodi Rave has spent much of the past year reporting on the reasons for – and solutions to – the disproportionate rate of domestic violence against Native women. This is the first installment in an occasional series,” the Missoulian in Missoula, Mont., told readers today.

Jodi Rave

“While the White House announced last fall that domestic violence decreased 59 percent during the last decade, the same can’t be said in Native communities,” her story said.

“‘The numbers seem to be going up,’ said Sarah Deer, Tribal Law and Policy Institute attorney in Minneapolis. ‘But we don’t know if domestic violence is becoming more frequent or if more people are reporting.’

“It is estimated that in their lifetimes, one in three Native women will be raped. Six in 10 will be physically assaulted.

“Native women experience 66 percent of the violent crimes committed against Native people.”

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Short Takes

• “The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has made a $4.4 million, multi-part grant to the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, University President C.D. Mote Jr. announced today. . . the planned new journalism building for the Merrill College will be named John S. and James L. Knight Hall,” a news release said. It noted that the college “is home to the National Association of Black Journalists and the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors.” NABJ is in negotiations on a move into the new building, which has a scheduled construction start of early 2008.
• Despite last week’s downsizing, the Dallas Morning News will excel in local news, investigative and enterprise reporting, education coverage, editorial page opinion and community leadership, coverage of local sports, local business, visual journalism, local arts, local entertainment, local lifestyles trends, religion, Mexico and border issues and state capital coverage, Executive Editor Bob Mong promised readers on Sunday.
• “A new study released today by AOL Latino looks at how internet usage varies by level of acculturation for the more than 16 million U.S. Hispanics online,” Laurel Wentz reported today for AdAge.com. “Mostly acculturated Hispanics are more likely to visit websites in areas like finance, entertainment and nutrition, while unacculturated Hispanics spend more time with sites that offer news from Latin America, as well as sports websites about soccer.”
• Morning anchor Randol White is leaving NBC-15, mostly for personal reasons: He’s accepted a morning anchor job at the CBS affiliate in Santa Barbara, Calif., close to his parents and his alma mater, Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, Melanie Conklin wrote Friday in the Wisconsin State Journal. “He says politics also played a role in his decision, including the amendment on the Nov. 7 ballot that would constitutionalize a ban on gay marriage.”
• “Indians have been able to overcome stereotypes to become the U.S.’s most successful immigrant group,” Vivek Wadhwa, the founder of two software companies and an executive-in-residence/adjunct professor at Duke University, wrote Thursday in Business Week. Wadhwa cited the South Asian Journalists Association as an example of how Indians in this country have networked successfully.
• Anita Brown, 63, founder of the group Black Geeks Online, died Sept. 8 in Washington. A wake is scheduled Tuesday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. with services at 11 a.m. Wednesday at Washington’s St. Augustine Catholic Church. “Among computer journalists she was certainly a pioneer. She was spreading the gospel of technology to people of color long before the term ‘digital divide’ was coined, Robert S. Anthony, editor of Stadium Circle Features, told Journal-isms. [Guest book]
• While columnist Stanley Crouch and others have denounced the Walter Kaitz Foundation’s decision to honor MTV Networks as a “diversity champion,” MTV delivered a video presentation at last week’s awards dinner “that illustrated how its networks–including gay-themed Logo; MTV Tr3s, directed at bilingual U.S. Hispanics; and Asian American-targeted MTV Desi, MTV Chi and MTV K-are serving the company’s business interests by appealing to and representing diverse audiences,” according to an editorial in Television Week. “MTV Networks CEO Judy McGrath, in her comments after the video, made it clear that MTV Networks couldn’t succeed in those business endeavors without hiring people who represent the audiences the business wants to reach.” Johnathan Rodgers, TV One president and CEO, co-chaired the event.
• The Washington Post ran a front-page story Sunday on lawn jockeys. “Whatever its origin, the lawn jockey became a symbol of obedient devotion — and nowhere more welcome than among slaveholders,” Fredrick Kunkle wrote. “Over time, the stooped lawn jockeys, often with cartoonish features, gave way to more erect, realistic figures — a change that tracked advances by blacks in American society,” an expert is quoted as saying. Last winter, the New Pittsburgh Courier recounted two versions of the story of Jocko Graves, said to have inspired the jockey, and concluded, “he was a proud ancestor who sacrificed his life for America.”
• Last weekend at the annual Journalism and Women’s Symposium in Sun Valley, Idaho, “reporter Claudia Meléndez Salinas presented her work on a project published in The Herald that examined how land-use decisions affect low-income families, particularly Latinos, who make up the bulk of the county’s lowest-paid work force,” Executive Editor Carolina Garcia of the Monterey County (Calif.) Herald wrote on Sunday. “Meléndez Salinas competed for and received one of 12 fellowships from the Institute for Justice and Journalism of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California,” Garcia wrote, saying the paper encouraged reporters to seek out such opportunities.
• The separation of Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown drew op-ed commentary from Clarence Page in the Chicago Tribune and Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post. “It was impossible to completely forget that these were real people in real distress, and also in real denial,” Robinson wrote on Friday. Page noted Sunday that “The final days of their coupling coincide roughly with a report that the leader of Al Qaeda once had a major crush on Whitney.” The headline writer asked, “If Bobby goes, will Osama call Whitney?”
• As a Global Day for Darfur was commemorated Sunday, columnists Errol Louis in the New York Daily News, Wendi C. Thomas in the Memphis Commercial Appeal and Renee Mitchell in the Oregonian of Portland were among those who wrote about the genocide in the Sudanese region and a similar tragedy in Rwanda.
• The experience of a generation of young men who left their country clandestinely to build the African National Congress and spread its liberation message in places as far-flung as Dar-Es-Salaam, Belgrade, London, Havana and New York provides the inspiration for Bronx-born filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris‘s “Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela,” premiering as part of the “P.O.V.” series Tuesday on PBS.
• Global Voices Online, a Web site about how news affects daily life and conversations in more than 130 countries, is this year’s $10,000 Grand Prize winner in the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism, J-Lab, an institute for interactive journalism, announced today. “The site uses skilled multilingual editors to find and publish thoughtful or entertaining bloggers who discuss what people are talking about in a given country,” it said.
• For the past few months, investigative journalist Clifford Derrick Otieno has been hiding out in South Africa, “doing a course at a South African university in order not to have to return to his native Kenya. He fears that a return home could endanger his life.” His fear “stems from his attempt to bring charges against the Kenyan First Lady, Lucy Kibaki, for assault.” She had “slapped him in front of a number of witnesses and damaged his camera,” reported the Freedom of Expression Institute in Johannesburg.
• The Johannesburg High Court Thursday enjoined The Mail and Guardian newspaper in Johannesburg from publishing an expose, the Freedom of Expression Institute said Friday. The institute “is very disturbed to hear that yet another urgent interdict has been granted against the media.”
• “Five years after Eritrea’s brutal crackdown on the independent press, the Committee to Protect Journalists today called for the release of 13 journalists held incommunicado in secret jails and two other journalists forced into extended military service,” the Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday.